Finally in paperback comes the beloved bestseller that honors not only one battle and one achievement, but the stories of six heroes and one indelible image: the photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima. "The best battle book I ever read".--Stephen E. Ambrose. Photos & maps throughout. Acclaimed by reviewers & experts upon publication--indeed, praised long before it landed in any store by booksellers & enthusiasts coast to coast--James Bradley's FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is one of the most inspiring stories ever told of courage & valor. It is also a deeply moving tribute to a father from a son. This emotional element, coupled with the exactingly brutal detail of the battle for Iwo Jima, has raised FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS to the top of multiple bestseller lists, evoking a response from readers that made it a 700,000 copy hardcover bestseller for longer than one year. FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS brings readers into the lives of the six young men--boys, really--who marched up the side of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima & raised a flag. That moment, captured for all time in an iconic photograph, is only a part of their stories; author Bradley reveals what each man's life was before, & after, that moment. Teenagers when the war struck, each soldier's odyssey is recounted, & the whole is a stunningly powerful tribute to the forces that forge heroes. This fall, the beautiful trade paperback edition will reach a new audience, backed by Bantam's steadfast commitment to bringing this book to the greatest readership possible. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima-and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag. Now the son of one of the flag-raisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever. To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island-an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man. Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.